Would they all hide in the bedroom? It was crazy. Diary of Anne Frank crazy.
Eleanor and her siblings share one bedroom, where her three brothers sleep on the floor while she and her sister slept on the bunk beds. They all are afraid of Ritchie and her mother deliberately makes them bathe, eat dinner and them go outside to play before Ritchie is home, presumably so as to avoid them getting hurt from his violent and mean demeanor. The plan would work while it’s still warm enough to go outside. Eleanor is worried about the days when it would start to get too cold to play outside. She wonders if her mother expected them all to hide in the bathroom all evening, out of Ritchie’s way. To her, this situation is no less than the years Anne Frank and her family spent in hiding in Amsterdam while trying to hide Nazis. It’s not just inhumane, but destructive of the kids’ growing years too.
‘Do you feel like he’s your dad?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Ben said flatly. ‘What’s that supposed to feel like?’
Eleanor has been away from her family for a year before she is reunited with them. She observes that while she was away, her siblings have developed an ambivalence towards Ritchie. She finds Maisie comfortable with sitting on Ritchie’s lap and other kids calling him dad, while they know he is not their dad. She observes that their loyalties have slowly shifted to Ritchie, and they might even betray her if she were to go against Ritchie. She asks Ben when she hears him calling Ritchie dad, is he believes that Ritchie is their dad or deserves to be called as dad. Ben replies that he has no idea what calling anyone dad feels like. This is indicative of the kids’ separation from their father and how the word ‘dad’ simply means a male figure who gets food on the table rather than someone they can be emotionally be dependent on.
And Eleanor disintegrated.
Eleanor and Park, after finding a way to connect over comics and music, begin to get intimate with each other. With little experience they have with sexual intimacy, they try to explore each other’s bodies while publicly surrounded. Since, they are so inexperienced with a body of opposite sex, and they have begun to grow an empathy for each other, they find little touches as innocent as hand-holding as potent as being lost in a vacuum that feels like being disintegrated.
Like she was the Invisible Girl. That would make Park Mr. Fantastic.
Eleanor and Park are avid comic book fans and have connected over reading comics during their bus rides. They often compare each other and themselves with comic book characters. This is their way of not just expressing themselves, but to escape realities where they can’t bear any longer. For Eleanor, being with Park gives her a sense of security and she can forget about being bullied or being unwelcome to her school. Park makes her feel like she is invisible to a world that wants to point things at her. And, to her Park feels like a superhero who possesses the power to make her worries go away.
Pick up, sweep aside – same difference in her mom’s world.
Eleanor’s mother, who is separated from her husband, is submissive to her boyfriend Ritchie as he takes care of her and her children. When her father invites Eleanor to babysit his girlfriend’s child, her siblings assume that they are invited as well. They get sad when they learn the whole thing. Her mother feels like he is breaking their hearts all over again and she is supposed to bring them back to their prior station. Eleanor feels like her mother is not really bringing them back to their prior position, she just finds a go-around to the situation instead of looking at a real long-term solution.
